Sakura Kuriyagawa
Sakura is Key's oldest friend, an independent and kind young woman who is very protective of Key. Overview She and Key attended the same junior high in Mamio Valley, where they became friends because they were both outcasts. In that time she unconsciously absorbed energy from Key until her body was compact with a dozen times the life energy of a normal person. Sakura moved to Tokyo where she works several jobs, including delivering pizza, running a video store, and directing traffic at construction sites. She rescues Key from Tamari's "studio" while delivering pizza, and later lets Key stay with her. Sakura does not truly believe Key is a robot. She is convinced that Key's growing up in the house of a robotics researcher, perhaps coupled with a childhood traumatic experience, has induced a semi-permanent autistic or catatonic condition on Key. She is genuinely concerned for Key, and will help Key recover. Sakura decides to buy into Key's notion of becoming an idol singer in order to get 30,000 friends; in this way perhaps Key's human nature can be restored. Sakura has a good friend besides Key: Tataki Shuu'ichi. Tataki's favorite stunt is to mispronounce Sakura's family name as "Chuukawa," for which Sakura will correct him ("Kuriyagawa desu!") in a not-overly-friendly tone and then laugh over it with Tataki, as if it were a more or less ritual greeting. Sakura knows Tomoyo Wakagi from childhood, from before her move to Tokyo. Sakura becomes Key's manager, creating the letterhead "Production Key" as the official front into getting Key into the idol business. Of course, this isn't as easy as it appears. Sakura has been bearing a burden within herself that's been causing her a great deal of mental and spiritual anguish. Being so near to Tokiko has infused within her an excess of soul matter that her body was not designed to accommodate, and the more time she spent around Key the more it pained her to feel that energy compacting in on her, stifling her with the life-force of thousands of other people. She never knew or suspected this, and in fact remains ignorant of it, but it has caused the two of them to become emotionally and spiritually connected. So when she was kidnapped by Production Minos Key could sense it. Like Miho Ajo began experimenting on her experiments. Luckily she was rescued by Trudy Wells. Unfortunately the experiments placed a great burden on her body forcing Trudy to show Key how to transfer her energy to save her. Trudy changed things in order to strengthen the bond between them so that Sakura now acts more like a safety valve, and the excess that flows into her can now be channeled creatively so that it doesn't drive the both of them crazy. The side effect to this is that the ties binding them as being as much emotional as spiritual, so now that Key here has shared a bit of her excess with her friend they're going to find themselves pretty much near inseparable now. This was shown when a recovered Sakura reached upto Key, put her arms around and embrace her. Both girls shared a kiss that displayed more passion on Sakura's part...but to which Key herself was gradually responding with renewed and intensified interest. Category:Continuum-59343921